Health Care/Joan Retsinas

The Divine Doctor

For years patients have criticized physicians for playing God. No
need to worry about that impersonation anymore. At last God is the
doctor, regulating your health care via His minions -- a legion of
televangelists and right-wing legislators who have scoured the Bible,
and Charlton Heston movie clips, for the nuggets of Ecclesiastical
Medicine.

So forget the wisdom as revealed in the Physicians' Desk
Reference. Forget the pointy-headed dictums from the scientists at
the National Institutes of Health. Don't look to see whether your
physician graduated from Harvard, trained at Massachusetts General
and is board-certified. Instead, give him a medical-ecclesiastical
quiz, to see whether he or she (but probably a he) knows
ecclesiastical medicine.

Non-ecclesiastical medicine spends lots of time and energy on sex
-- how to enhance it, how to block pregnancy, how to guard against
infection. How sacrilegious!

The God-Doctor abhors sex, except of course for procreation --
and that means procreation within a June-and-Ward-Cleaver,
two-children-in-the-suburbs marriage. (Never mind that June may have
popped valium to stay in her Stepford trance, and Ward may have
downed nightly martinis.)

Ecclesiastical medicine has no interest in birth control.
God-inspired doctors don't prescribe it -- not even to women
struggling in developing countries to feed the children they have.
These doctors don't talk about it. They tell patients about the joys
of parenthood, or the joys of abstinence, depending on patients'
marital status. If patients are gay, the physicians preach the moral
correctness of Ward-and-Cleaver unions -- or the joys of
abstinence. They don't urge condoms, because condoms accompany sex,
and sex outside marriage is anathema -- and marriage among gays is
another anathema.

As for "sex education," ecclesiastical doctors recognize its
dangers. The more teenagers know about the devilish ways we can enjoy
our bodies, the more they will want to go for it. Ignorance may or
may not be bliss -- but it spurs virtue. So in school teenagers
learn nothing about condoms, diaphragms or birth control pills. Of
course, the incidence of sexually-transmitted diseases has risen
among these abstinence-trained teenagers, but the problem is their
weak licentious will. Maybe we should revive scarlet letters to deter
the weak-willed.

Biblically-rooted medicine has no need for a vaccine that
protects against the HIV virus. You get the virus from sex. The
vaccine may encourage more of it.

The devil has worked through scientists to create this lure. As
for abortion, moral doctors don't mention it. They don't even train
to do it, so that the woman who is raped, or gets pregnant via
incest, must bring to life a tangible reminder of the pain. But pain
is good; more precisely, other people's pain is good for them.

And if some pregnant women discover, through routine tests, that
their fetuses have severe deficits -- well, that brings more
purifying angst. In the amoral not-so-long-ago, many of these women
aborted. In this ascending era of moral medicine, we can do away with
those tests -- moral medicine will forbid these abortions. The
abortion-bound women can head for Europe, continent of
promiscuity.

Fortunately for ecclesiastical medicine, moral-pharmacists have
joined the fray. Those doctors who haven't seen the light -- who
still consult the Physicians' Desk Reference rather than the Bible
when they treat patients -- prescribe birth control pills and
"morning after" pills. Women take these pills after intercourse to
block pregnancy -- more deviltry to lure people into sex.

The forces of righteousness, though, are prevailing: Pharmacists
now can, and do, refuse to fill these prescriptions on the grounds of
"conscience." Even pharmacists employed by mega-chains like Walgreens
and CVS have told women "no" (and, I assume, lectured these customers
on the error of their ways).

The woman intent on sex and not intent on motherhood may soon
have to pharmacist-shop, interviewing staff to see who will and who
won't fill her prescription.

A few chains have fired employees (Eckerd Drugs in Denton, Texas,
fired a pharmacist who turned away a rape victim seeking a
morning-after pill); but chains risk running afoul of employees'
"right-to-conscience." Two states -- South Dakota and Arkansas --
protect pharmacists who refuse to fill a prescription because of
"conscience," and at least 10 other states are considering such
protections. In fact, while most proposed "right to conscience"
clauses stipulate that the pharmacist must refer the customer to
another pharmacist (or another store), some zealots nix even
referrals, as "passive participation" in evil.

God talks to lots of people: Educators have been re-writing
science texts, making Darwin a footnote. Researchers have shunned
stem cell research, whatever its potential benefit. So it is not
surprising that health care providers are joining the ranks of the
inspired. These heirs of Hippocrates are rewriting the tenets of
medicine. We may all emerge sicker for it.

Joan Retsinas is a sociologist who writes about health care in
Providence, R.I. Email retsinas@verizon.net.